


kingdom come

by grossly



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Flowers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 05:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17054282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grossly/pseuds/grossly
Summary: The King’s tears breathe life.





	kingdom come

**Author's Note:**

> something i made a few years ago for hqflowerzine. unedited

_The King sits on his throne._

_A roof of vines, baby blue azaleas woven into the crevices. Light filters through the leaves, and prints freckles of sun on his pale face. The oak pillars hum the melody of_ tamuke _, their steady cadences echoing through the wood far yonder. Their branches stretch, stretch, stretch._

_The King’s tears breathe life._

 

 

Kageyama awakens to the light touch of a finger on the patch of skin between his eyebrows. He blinks, and it is gone. He feels the stranger before he sees him, a faint, ghostly presence curled up against the willow trees dotting the boundaries of the shrine, a basket tucked in his arms.

Kageyama slowly rises from his throne, taking a dazed step off the heather-dotted platform. It has been a long time since anyone has stepped into his haven.

“Who are you?” he asks the stranger.

The stranger glances up at him through his eyelashes, gaze flitting away as quick as they’d settled onto him. He mutters, “Who are _you_?”

“I am Kageyama,” Kageyama says. His voice sounds like a millennium away, his name something from a lullaby a long time ago. “The god of the forest. Who are you?”

“Kunimi,” the stranger, Kunimi, says.

“Why are you here?” Kageyama asks.

“I don’t know,” Kunimi says. The hum of life fills Kageyama’s ears, the rush of water and the warmth of the sun and _growth_ , all at once. A blackberry shrubs sprouts by Kunimi’s feet. He silently plucks a berry off the shrub, and munches on it.

“The shrine favours you,” Kageyama realises, in half wonder. He looks at Kunimi for a moment, jet black hair and half-lidded eyes and lips sucking dark red blackberry juice from his fingers, sunlight dotting his clothes and skin.

“You are beautiful,” Kageyama says. “I would like to make you my bride.”

“No,” Kunimi says, folding his arms and lying back against the willow trunk. He closes his eyes. The willow’s leaves shift, as if trying to shield him from Kageyama. Kageyama frowns. “Fuck off.”

“I am the god of the forest,” Kageyama repeats.

Kunimi lazily opens one eye, and chuckles dryly.

“Then I’d just have to get out of the forest, wouldn’t I?”

 

 

The melody of the _tamuke_ is haunting. Kageyama wonders if Kunimi knows, that they sing it for him. Kageyama wonders if he hears it. Surely, he must. The shrine favours him so.

Kageyama had felt Kunimi leave—had seen the tilt of his fingers as he opened the latch of the basket he’d brought with him, heard the small clack as he left a brass pocket watch at the entrance of the shrine, the willows swaying in the wind like a wave goodbye.

Kageyama doesn’t know why he let him go.

He can still feel Kunimi treading across the wild grass, his ankles brushing against the tip of the blades. Here is no man’s land, and yet Kunimi continues plodding, slowly, step by step. The brass is cool in Kageyama’s hand, as gold is in Kunimi’s. _Keep time on your side._

Kunimi feels so familiar, his heart could break.

 

 

_An eon away, the sun still leaves dapples on sweat-soaked skin._

_Soft gasping pants are like jingling bells, the sound of cool, trickling water a breath of fresh air. Sweat-slicked skin against sweat-slicked skin. Heads tilted back, Adam’s apples bobbing up and down against the blazing heat. Wry smiles shared like lover’s secrets._

_A musky scent fills the air, and the King-to-be inhales. Young and pure, still._

 

 

The pocket watch ticks incessantly, on and on and on and on. Sometimes, it is drowned out by the rustling leaves, or the choruses of the breeze. Other times, it is deafening, drowning out the roaring silence in Kageyama’s head.

The tempo is too fast for Kunimi to walk to.

Kageyama shivers. He feels Kunimi’s toes curled up in the soil like soft touches on his skin, tracing the creases and folds of his calves, his back, his everywhere. Kunimi’s feet tread so lightly, Kageyama has to look hard for the ghostly caresses. Kageyama has to look hard, for Kunimi’s presence. And the azaleas bloom, wherever Kunimi touches.

Like a reminder; not for Kunimi, but for Kageyama. That he is here, now. And that he may have left, but he is, still, here.

Slowly, Kageyama crawls to the ground from his throne. He pushes the foliage apart, and places his ear against the soil. He hears Kunimi’s footsteps, the soft thumps pulsating like a new-born baby’s heartbeat, a steady warmth washing over him.

Kunimi cannot escape, Kageyama knows, but it still feels as if he might just—disappear.

 

 

Every night after that, Kageyama dreams of Kunimi.

“I… I promised my grandmother, a long time ago, that I would keep time on my side,” Kageyama would say, with a shaky exhale. “Please, Kunimi.”

Kunimi’s eyes would soften, and the gentleness of it always flashes past so fast Kageyama thinks, every night, that he must have been seeing things. Then the usual lackadaisical expression would return to Kunimi’s features, and his gaze would deaden.

“You’re not the only one with promises to keep,” he has said countless times. Then he turns around and trudges away, deeper into the forest, where the sunlight is like stars in the night sky, and only unearthly beings dare tread.

Kunimi’s words, and the sight of his diminishing back, always leave Kageyama with a resounding boom in his chest, echoing throughout the hollows of his body, and he is left trembling in its wake. He thinks, not for the first time, but for the first time in an eon, that this, perhaps, may be love.

In the background, the pocket watch ticks—on and on and on and on. Under the sunlight, it sparkles gold.

 

 

_The King and his fated, to be forever apart, by their own designation. Fated to be forever apart, by their own designation. An eon ago, the King’s; now, his fated’s._

_The innocence will fade, as will the divinity, and all that will be left are souls, bared only for each other. Nothing as romantic as two halves of a whole, or two pieces of a puzzle, but still fated, soulmates._

_The sun still shines, and the azaleas continue to bloom._

**Author's Note:**

> \- Kag’s birth flower which I got from some Japanese insignia??? Website is the azalea, and means: omnipotence, keep time on your side  
> \- Heathers are solitude  
> \- Willows are emotion, love, intuition  
> \- Tamuke: a prayer for safe passage through life and through death, or a requiem for the departed souls of loved ones


End file.
